Basketball
nounA team sport in which players score by throwing a ball through a raised hoop, or the ball used in that sport.
How to spell basketball
10 letters · 3 syllables
How to pronounce basketball
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does basketball mean?
- nounA team sport in which players score by throwing a ball through a raised hoop, or the ball used in that sport.
Basketball in a sentence
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The children played basketball in the driveway after school.
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He bought a new basketball to replace the one that had gone flat.
Where does basketball come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
Basketball is a transparent compound of two existing English words, 'basket' and 'ball', coined to describe a game invented in 1891 by James Naismith, a Canadian physical education instructor working in Springfield, Massachusetts. The first 'baskets' were literally peach baskets nailed to the gymnasium balcony, so the name described exactly what players aimed for. The element 'basket' came into English in the medieval period and is of uncertain ultimate origin, possibly Celtic, while 'ball' descends from a Germanic root for a round object, related to Old Norse 'bollr'. Because both halves are familiar everyday words, the spelling holds no hidden traps; the only thing to remember is that it is written as a single solid word rather than two. The game spread rapidly through the YMCA network and became one of the most popular sports worldwide within a few decades.
How the word is built
- basket (woven container)
- ball (round object/game)
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